


something to wake me up

by Rehearsal_Dweller



Series: Near Miss AU [10]
Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: 5+1 Things, Gen, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25131358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rehearsal_Dweller/pseuds/Rehearsal_Dweller
Summary: Five times Buttons bought drinks for no one, and one time he remembered not to.
Series: Near Miss AU [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735408
Comments: 34
Kudos: 60





	something to wake me up

**Author's Note:**

> Now, arguably this is actually a 5+1(+1), because there is a teensy tiny flash forward at the very end. Featuring another entry in Conlon sister bingo! I've placed this between "old friends, new problems" and "i'll find you again" as a sort of flashback ending in the present, since putting it where the bulk of it falls chronologically feels wrong.
> 
> also, look, I don't go into this stuff LOOKING for ways to make Ben sad. It just keeps happening, okay?

Benny has always expressed his love for people by showing up to spend time with them with food or drinks for them. It’s a win-win – quality time, _and_ gift giving. Specifically caregiving, useful gift giving.

The thing is, though, Benny’s number one target is gone now.

Which means that he’s standing in a Starbucks with two drinks in his hand and no one to give the second to.

It didn’t click until the barista was handing him the second cup, and at that point it was way too late to do anything about it. So he took it, and now he’s sitting alone at a table drinking his coffee and staring at the other cup like it killed his family.

“Did you get stood up?” someone asks.

Benny looks up, meeting the eye of a kind looking college age girl who’s smiling sympathetically at him. “What?”

“You’re a guy sitting alone with two drinks looking miserable,” the girl says. “Coffee date fall through?”

“Something like that,” Benny says.

“You want some company?” she replies.

Benny shrugs.

She sits down across from him. “I’m Fiona. Are you okay?”

“Ben,” Benny replies. “I’m – fine.”

Fiona hums. “It’s okay if you don’t wanna, like, air your problems to a stranger at Starbucks, but forgive me for saying you don’t look fine.”

“You’re forgiven,” Benny says. “You make a habit of talking to random guys at coffee shops, or –“

“Just the sad ones,” says Fiona.

Benny laughs at that, despite himself. “I look that pathetic?”

“Nah,” Fiona says. “But getting stood up sucks, and at least this way you’re not alone, you know?”

“Yeah,” says Benny, trying to shut down how much this _does_ feel like he’s been stood up, even though he’d been planning to go _to_ David with his coffee. He takes a deep breath. “I’ve gotta get going. Thanks for – for whatever this was.”

Fiona smiles at him. “I hope the rest of your day is better, Ben.”

On instinct, he takes the second cup with him when he leaves. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do with it, it’s made how David likes which means Ben won’t enjoy drinking it himself and he’s not sure he wants to give it to anybody else.

He feels something fracture in his chest when he ends up throwing it away.

\--

The next time he does it, Ben is sitting on the subway when he realizes he doesn’t know who he’s going to give this hot chocolate to but it sure as hell isn’t going to be David Jacobs.

He ends up walking into work still carrying both cups – his own and not-David’s – and offering the extra to Stef, who sits opposite him.

“Is something wrong with it?” Stef asks.

“No, I just got an extra,” says Ben. “By accident.”

“How did you manage that?” says Stef.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” says Ben.

Stef raises an eyebrow. “It’s not that deep, man. How did you accidentally get an extra hot chocolate? Barista screw your drink up or something?”

“I _don’t_ want to _talk about it_ ,” Ben repeats firmly.

Before Stef can say anything else, Ben gets up and leaves the room. He leaves his own cup on his desk.

He doesn’t want to look at another fucking to go cup in his life.

\--

“Hey, Jack,” Ben says, pushing open the door to the Larkin house like he lives there – and, for a not insignificant portion of high school, he kind of did. “You want a coffee?”

“Jack’s not home, honey,” Medda says. “You look pale, are you alright?”

“Right, I – I was just nearby and I thought I’d swing over,” says Ben.

“Buttons,” Medda says.

“I accidentally ordered this,” Ben says. He holds it out. “For a friend who doesn’t – a friend who I can’t give it to. Do you want it, Meds? I think if I throw it out, I’ll cry.”

“Oh, Buttons.”

\--

Benny’s heart sinks when he realizes he’s done it again.

It’s just a reflex, he can’t help himself. He does it without even thinking about David specifically, but he always knows that’s who it’s meant for.

He goes to Bill and Darcy’s place, extra cup clutched tight in his left hand.

“Does one of you want a tea how Dave likes it?” he chokes out when Darcy answers the door. “Because I can’t stand it with this much sugar and –“

“Fuck, Ben, again?” Darcy says gently.

Ben nods, squeezing his eyes shut tight.

Darcy takes the cup from him, and takes Ben’s other hand in his own to lead him back into the apartment.

“You’d think it would be easier to remember to only ever buy drinks for myself,” Ben says, sitting heavily on the couch.

“You spent a long time always thinking of him, too,” Bill replies, shrugging. “It’s a hard habit to break.”

“He still isn’t answering my texts.”

“I don’t think that’s gonna change, Benny. You’re better off not texting him, then he can’t not answer.”

Ben tips his head back against the cushion, looking up at the ceiling. “Is it possible that friend breakups are worse than regular breakups?”

“It’s probably got more to do with how close you are than whether the relationship is romantic,” says Darcy. “And you and Dave were really fucking close. It’s bound to sting.”

“It hurt us, too, and we weren’t nearly as involved with him as you,” Bill adds.

“But it’s like, like, I barely even think about it most of the time – except to wonder if he’s okay – and then I go to a fucking coffee shop and it’s like it just happened fucking yesterday.”

“Shit like this doesn’t heal overnight, Ben,” says Bill. “You gotta give yourself time. It’ll get easier.”

Ben sighs. “What if I don’t want it to get easier? What if – what if that means it _wasn’t_ –“

“What?” Darcy cuts in. “Real? You can heal from a wound, doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. And I think even when we’re all hurting less, this one’s going to scar.”

“Yeah,” agrees Ben. “I think it is.”

\--

“Hey, Sad Ben!” a half familiar voice greets.

Ben looks up – that girl from a few months ago is standing by the pickup counter, waving at him. Finn? No – “Fiona, hi.”

“You look happier,” she says. Her drink is finished, and she takes it from the barista and sits down across from him again.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t –“

The barista calls Ben’s name a second time for a second drink and he wants to fucking cry.

“I got it,” Fiona says. She pops up and grabs the drink, setting it next to the cup already in front of Ben. “Waiting on someone?”

“No, I’m – I got dumped, sort of, a while ago. Right before the first time I met you,” Ben admits, and it’s not quite accurate but it’s hard to know whether people will understand the weight if he just says he lost a friend. “I can’t fucking break the habit of buying him drinks, though.”

“Oh,” says Fiona. “That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“Want some company?” she asks.

Ben nods.

They talk about their lives – they didn’t really do that, the last time they met. Ben learns that Fiona is a senior in college, and she’s one of four sisters, and she can’t resist trying to help people when they’re down.

Ben tells her that he’s a year out of college, an only child with a single mom, and he brings hot drinks to the people he loves to show them he loves them.

Fiona’s eyes fall on the cup sitting between them, not being drunk.

“So you still –“

“Yeah.”

He leaves with her phone number and a new friend. She can’t replace the old one, but at least he’s still got a life.

\--

There’s a day, about a year and a half after graduation, when Ben goes to his local coffee shop and leaves with one cup in his hand. It’s a cold, bitter New York winter morning, the kind that normally kindles the urge to bring David a hot drink and maybe a scarf. The boy is a stringbean and he never bundles up enough.

But he gets all the way home and then realizes he actually – for once – didn’t do that.

There is one cup.

It’s his own drink.

Ben needs to sit down. He thinks about calling Bill, but he’s not sure he’s ready to hear someone call this _good_ or _progress_.

He thinks about calling his mom, and crying through the phone to her, because does this mean he’s moved on? Is that okay? If he’s moved on why does this still hurt so fucking much?

(He thinks about texting David.)

He doesn’t do any of those things. He just drinks his tea and then curls up on his couch and waits for the ache to fade.

\--

Benny is standing in a Starbucks near his parents’ house, texting David and getting responses for the first time in years.

(He texts Fiona, too: _you’ll never guess who I’m buying hot chocolate for right now._ )

He orders for himself, and for David and Les and Leah.

He orders for himself and for David, and it’s like a missing piece of himself has clicked back into place.


End file.
